For the marginal farmers beleaguered by crop failures, cotton, which fetches a much bigger minimum support price from the Government, seems like a cloud nine descending straight to the earth and the area of cultivation has gone up drastically over the years, now ranging between 1.2-1.4 million hectares.
Wiki says cotton has been grown in India for more than three thousand years, and it is referred to in the Rig-veda, written in 1500BC. The pictures are taken outside a ginning mill in Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh. Ginning is the process of separating the fibre from the seeds and then it is sent to a spinning mill to be turned into yarn.
Thousands of tractors and carts bring loads of cotton to the ginning mills and are unloaded at the weighbridge and is bought by millers and the Cotton Corporation of India, the government agency to buy the raw cotton.
Cart wheels trundle on the gravelly and hilly roads of the Adilabad as the farmers patiently await first for their cattle to take them to the destination and then to line up among hundreds like themselves for the miller to accept the load.
Exploitation is the name of the game as the carts are made to wait for days so that the farmer tires himself out and would sell without asking for a remunerative price. Children often accompany their fathers on the trip and small groups find their own forms of entertainment as they recline on the carts.